Fairy tales are some of the earliest stories any of us ever remember hearing. This realization, combined with my status as an English major and gender studies minor, left me with an interesting question: what ideas do these stories give children about what it means to be a grown man or woman, especially with the sexist nature of most fairy tales? Obviously having to accept outright that these stories never provide any representation for anyone on the LGBTQ spectrum, it still shocks me that these stories portray women, a population that should be considered roughly half of the human race at any given moment, so unfairly. It is easy to dismiss fairy tales as “products of their time” and decide that they warrant no more critical analysis of the things that make them problematic. “They didn’t know any better at the time” is not good enough for me, though. I think it’s important to apply a modern critical lens to older works, especially works that are as prevalent in our modern culture as fairy tales are. Examining the values that lie behind these seemingly simple stories can tell us a lot about our past (why these stories where written) our present (why we still tell these stories today) and our future (what we are going to do with them from here on out). It was these questions that led me to an examination of gender in fairy tales. While there are countless tales to choose from that operate on a double standard of behavior acceptable for men but not women, I decided to work with the concept of “greed” because of its continued relevance in modern society. The self-made man is ubiquitous, but the idea of a self-made woman is rarely if ever considered. While American society at large praises entrepreneurship in theory, in practice women are rarely encouraged to take the same steps as male counterparts. While I do not mean this to suggest that women should simply join men in the perpetuation of the oppressive system of capitalism, it is interesting that stories operate uncritically within that framework without allowing women a place in the market. Pointing out these problems in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “The Fisherman’s Wife” seemed to me a great place to start, as these tales seem to represent both ends of the spectrum. In addition to the analysis in the paper itself, the images that I chose to accompany my work reveal an implicit bias in the texts that I would like to comment on. Paul Woodroofe’s illustration of Jack descending the beanstalk with the giant’s harp portrays Jack as some sort of saint, from his cherubic blond curls, to the bright blush on his cheeks, to the emaciation of his frame, to the wide spread of his arms as though in Christian ecstasy. Woodroofe’s Jack is clearly a character the viewer is supposed to find beautiful and sympathetic, even while explicitly in the act of stealing, absconding down the beanstalk with the pilfered harp. Paired with Watson’s drawing of the menacing giant, an animalistic, goblin-like creature wielding a deadly club in its claws, the images create an explicit image of whom the reader is meant to sympathize with. Even though Jack’s actions include theft and murder, the giant is clearly the villain of the story, pitted directly against Jack as the small, plucky hero. The illustrations of the fisherman’s wife also create a clear image of where sympathies are meant to lie. Rackham’s spare and sketchy style conveys the poverty of the fisherman and his wife, but while the husband merely looks run-down, the wife, subject to the same conditions, seems actively antagonistic, a scowl upon her face and a knife in her hands as she apparently shouts at her beleaguered husband. Rackham’s portrayal of the wife is unattractive and unsympathetic, while Crane’s version emphasizes the wife’s greed. She is depicted in her bed, one arm wrapped around the crown and keys that symbolize her status as emperor, but one hand still reaches out for more. Presumably demanding power to make the sun and moon rise and her command like a god, she reaches for the celestial bodies while her suffering husband appears, literally and figuratively, beneath her, seemingly curled in displeasure against her ingratitude. Both of these images cast sympathy for the husband to the detriment of the wife, as though her greed is an oppressive force he cannot control or even contend with. The unequal pictorial depiction of male and female characters merely serves to underscore the initial inequity in the tales themselves. Analyzing exactly what makes certain aspects of a story and its iterations problematic allows a modern audience to question unchallenged assumptions. It is not my hope in analyzing these stories to proclaim them worthless in a modern context, but to point out where they fall short in the hopes that these beloved tales can be adapted or interpreted in ways that provide entertainment, education, and equality for all readers.--Morgan Philley

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